What Do You, Cam Newton and Don Draper Have in Common?
Here’s a little story about it
I was sitting in my basement, on the glass coffee table in front of the flat-screen, playing FIFA and listening to Bomani Jones speak on a podcast, when I heard him say something profound. He made my pathetic little brain hurt a pathetic little bit, the way he often does. The little players I was manipulating on the screen suddenly took on a new meaning in my mind — a different meaning, similar, but distinctly different. I’ve since tossed around the idea Bomani illuminated , debating whether it was obvious or profound. It’s both. I think.
What Bomani laid bare was the fact that professional sports, as the sports media presents them, are no different than any other form of storytelling — movies, shows, novels. His exact comparison was TV shows.
In other words, the leagues, seasons, owners, managers, coaches and players I’ve watched all my life are the same to me, as the characters in my mother’s soap opera are to her. We are captivated by their stories. We know their backstories and their potential and their hopes. We identify with their drive and their confusion and their despair. Yes, sports are unscripted, but the narratives within them are no less purposefully molded than your favorite sitcom. You might be thinking, “Sure. I knew this.” Well, I told you it was obvious.
Not only are professional sports merely another form of televised storytelling, but they’re crafted just as intentionally as any other. ESPN, FOX Sports, NBC, CBS, HBO (and all the other three and four letter media powerhouses that traffic in human attention) shape the storylines of sports as carefully as Matthew Weiner shapes the storylines in Mad Men. Is Cam Newton officiated differently because he’s black? Can Joan Holloway transcend the sexual norms of her era? Same shit, different bowl. Can we root for LeBron James after seeing him toy, heartlessly with the people that love him in Cleveland? Can we root for Don Draper after seeing him toy, heartlessly with the people who love him at home? “Same same,” as they say in Thailand. “Look at that kooky and lovable alcoholic Ron Artest! Did you know he used to drink at halftime? That was in the early aughts though.” Isn’t that different than, “Look at that kooky and lovable alcoholic Roger Sterling! Did you know he drinks before lunch? That was in the late sixties though.”
Jones’s example — well articulated as usual from Salad Fingers’s hyper-intellectual non-cartoon cousin — was from the women’s NCAA basketball tournament. Here’s what he said:
One thing I think we have to remember is that sports is primarily consumed, in this country, as television shows, and television shows are built along a certain construct, and that construct is apparent at the beginning of every game broadcast, you just don’t realize that’s what’s happening. We are giving you the main characters, we are giving you a plot and then we are going to see how this thing carries out. And I realized it one year in the women’s Final Four, when Brittney Griner was at Baylor and everybody thought that Baylor was gonna walk through it, and they lost in the Final Four round. I think it was to Notre Dame… All we’d heard the whole way up was “Brittney Griner, Brittney Griner, Brittney Griner.” Now Brittney Griner was gone. Man, they were ready for that championship game, and all they did was say ‘Playing the role of Brittney Griner in this production is Skylar Diggins.’ And we dropped Skylar Diggins in, and all of a sudden, we had a whole new story and narrative that we had constructed and built.
Sports feel authentic and raw because they are. But they’re still stories, just like Game of Thrones, House of Cards or Sons of Anarchy. Sports are TV shows that write themselves.
But story shapes more than the media we consume — scripted or otherwise. We interpret the world through story. I’m living my own story right now. So are you. So are your parents, siblings and children. Those stories just aren’t written down or put on camera. A story that is thought up then acted out in front of a camera is hardly different than one that is improvised in the office or on a date or at your Wednesday night co-ed softball game. They’re all stories that we think up then make real. Situation moves the plot, we empathize with the people involved and engage with the narrative as it evolves. Will you get accepted to your dream college? Will Fultz get drafted number one? Will Pete Campbell make it to partner? — All the same. All stories.
Obvious, but profound no?
Some of you (assuming there are any) are probably clapping sarcastically and muttering, “welcome to the party dipshit.” To that I say, “Thanks. Glad to be here.”
It does feel a little strange, knowing I can’t roll my eyes at my parents anymore when they’re on the edge of their seat watching Rachel Maddow. That’s just another media company crafting a narrative around unscripted stories (sigh).
But sports are by no means ruined for me. I still love the stories — they are some of the best ones being told. Only now, when I watch, I’ll have that same feeling I get when I’m watching a movie but I’m simultaneously thinking about how it was made — what the writers were trying to do with my emotions during that last scene and how that actor was “at work” when they shot it.
So as I sat there, on the glass coffee table, four feet from a giant television, acting out the “plays FIFA, listens to podcasts and considers the nature of human interpretations of reality” portion of my story, something clicked in my brain. I could almost hear it. You know that feeling when four or five neurons that have been firing side by side for years connect for the first time? It’s like the grand opening of a new store; someone cuts a giant ribbon with giant scissors and suddenly this thing exists. I won’t ever be able to watch a sporting event the same way again. Hell, my next family thanksgiving is going to be a trip — looking around and seeing everyone’s stories intersecting and morphing right in front of me.
To be continued…
